When I first approached Max about doing another interview, he sounded pretty excited about it. I could tell this experience was pushing his need to be ‘special and unique,’ buttons. But when I met up with him, it was quite a different story. His mood was dark and his energy was very odd. I felt uncomfortable, so I decided to jump right into it and get it over and done with, as quickly as possible.
Sav: So Max, my readers want to know if you are still with the same girlfriend?
Max: I have no girlfriend, my heart is empty. I’ve grown even more distant recently and I’ve realized this, so I’m taking a step back and just trying to be alone until I come out of this.
Sav: Come out of what? Are you depressed?
Max: Yeah I’m depressed. I’m not bummed out or sad. I’m just angry. My thoughts are horrible lately.
Sav: What kind of thoughts are you having?
Max: When I hear about people in Syria, or Afghanistan, or wherever, getting shot and killed – I like it. It makes me happy.
Sav: What?
Max: You heard me. If people die and are miserable, I feel better. When I see couples at the mall, being happy and holding hands, I feel like punching them in the face. It makes me angry.
Sav: Wow. You seem really agitated and upset today. What’s going on with you?
Max: I think I need to be on medication, but I hate taking it.
Sav: What’s the cause of all this hostility?
Max: Money, girls, sex. I’m 31, single, living at home and I’ll never meet anyone. That’s why I’m miserable. My stock is tanking. My booty call no longer talks to me. I can get girls, but I’m not into the girls who offer. I wanted this teacher, but she’s done with me. (He shows me a Facebook profile of a beautiful woman).
Sav: My readers would like to know if you do a lot of online dating and if so, what sites do you use?
Max: Tinder. Plenty of Fish, Match, OK Cupid. But I’ve cut down on the sites that I use. I’m not putting in any effort right now, because I know how life works. I won’t find anyone until I’m happy with myself, so I’ve saved myself the frustration and just stopped dating.
Sav: So what we are witnessing here is you going through “supply withdrawal?”
Max: I guess.
Sav: My readers would like to know, when you are online and looking at profiles, if there is a particular type of woman that you pick? What is it that you look for?
Max: I always have a type. I look for successful, educated girls. I prefer brunettes usually. I like a nice slender body, but sometimes I pick one not as good looking as me, because I just want their undivided attention. I want them to be thrilled with me and appreciate the fact that I picked them.
Sav: How could someone protect themselves from being targeted by a Narcissist?
Max: You can’t. Even educated, healthy women have chinks in their armor. We find the weak point. We look for easier marks where we don’t have to put in as much effort – people that are too nice, too naïve and who don’t put their foot down, people we can manipulate easier, someone who will allow us to keep some sort of game going.
Sav: What happens when you like a girl and she likes you?
Max: I’ll screw it up. That’s why I’ll never find someone. A girl has to spend a lot of time with me and not pressure me. And I have to wake up one day and decide that I can’t live without her. If I like her from the start – it’s over
Sav: Why?
Max: Cuz my brain does bad things. It’s always thinking of her until it’s exhausted. I over analyze. I check my phone all the time to see if she’s contacted me and when she does, I have to think about how long I should wait to respond, what I should say. If she doesn’t contact me, I’m stalking her online to see what she’s doing – if she’s logged into a dating site, talking to other guys, when she should be contacting me. I get obsessed. Oh the mental games my brain plays. It’s exhausting.
Sav: Wow that does sound exhausting. You kind of sound like an obsessive type of predator.
Max: I am a predator. Sometimes I pick women and I send them a c**k pic. (Nude pictures)
Sav: Oh… and why would you do that?
Max: Some women compliment my body and it makes me feel good. I’ve posted nudes of my body all over the internet. There are sites you can go to, to do that. I love it when girls like my d*ck.
Sav: Max, tell me honestly, how do you feel about women in general?
Max: I don’t feel good about them, don’t trust them. Sometimes it feels like they are the enemy.
Sav: What about me, your mom, or your sister?
Max: You’re fine.
Sav: Why?
Max: Because I know I can’t date you, so there is no threat to my ego.
Sav: What about your mom?
Max: I don’t know.
Sav: Your sister?
Max: Sometimes I hate her. She talks down to me and chimes in when I’m bickering with my parents. I’m done with all her brother sister drama. You know I’m really a miserable prick. I’m a boring guy, I don’t do much. I play guitar, play video games. I don’t go out much. I wish people would just leave me alone. This is why I don’t talk to people when I’m like this.
Sav: Can you tell when and why you slip into these moods?
Max: I didn’t use to, but I can now.
Sav: What does it feel like? What are you experiencing?
Max: I feel frustrated, like I’m stuck and I can’t move and it makes me angry.
Sav: Have you ever physically harmed a woman when you are feeling like this?
Max: I’ve never hit anyone. I did spit on a girl once.
Sav: That’s terrible. Why did you do that?
Max: Because she was a pig. Look I’ve made peace with the fact that I will never have love or a family. I say to myself, that when I die, it won’t matter if I ever loved anyone, because I’ll be dead, so that’s comforting.
Sav: That doesn’t sound very comforting It doesn’t even make sense. I know you want a wife, a family, are you saying you’ve given up?
Max: I know it won’t happen, but I try anyways, because I’m bored and I don’t want to be alone.
Sav: So you’ve given up hope?
Max: I have hope. I want it to happen. But I have no faith that it will.
With that I downed the last of my cappuccino and ended the interview. I thanked him, put on my coat and walked the few blocks to my home.
I never know what to expect when I talk to Max. I had an idea of where I wanted to take this interview. I had received a lot of questions about what women could do to protect themselves online from Narcissists, but I let the interview steer itself and as always I learned something more valuable.
I felt drained after talking to him this time and I just wanted to get away. His negativity was starting to affect my mood and I needed the distance. As I walked, I noticed the beautiful autumn colors and my spirits lifted. I started to digest everything he had to say and it made me think of infamous serial killer Elliot Rodger. The virgin college student, who blamed women for his circumstances, because they weren’t interested in him. His plan was to walk into his college’s largest sorority and open fire on all the beautiful women, that wouldn’t give him the time of day.
While I don’t believe Max is a threat to society, I believe he shares a lot of the same beliefs and behaviors. He is a misanthrope. He hates people, all people and is extremely envious of those who are happy and successful. He is a misogynist. He hates women, all women, even his mother. His general temperament simmers around misery and anger, except when he has an abundance of supply, then he seems almost manic. These feelings, he can’t control and he doesn’t know what to do with them. We talked about medication, I’m usually not an advocate of meds, but in some cases it may help to alleviate his anxiety and depression and may help to stabilize his moods. He said he had to work on himself before he can get a girlfriend and I asked him what that entailed and what he was doing, not surprisingly, he didn’t know, and didn’t have a plan.
Here is a Youtube video of Elliot Rodger. After watching a few minutes of it, you will understand the same type of individual I was dealing with today. The entitlement behaviors and the need to blame other people and make them responsible for his moods, is a huge sign you’re dealing with someone that is not healthy and potentially dangerous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQUW3Km01BM&bpctr=1414352952
When I got home I broke my own rule. I logged onto Facebook and I looked at the profile of the ex-wife of my last boomerang Narcissist. She is getting her Master’s degree in Psychology, she has remarried and has just given birth to a beautiful baby girl. I then went to the profile of the girl he dated after me. She was thriving in her career and dating someone new, the girl after her was also thriving and involved with someone else. I then went to his profile.
He was single, posting body shots, adding girl after girl, still doing the same thing, still stuck in the same dysfunctional cycle.
Then I smiled.
Not because he was still playing the same game, but because all four of his left overs, me included, had come a long way. ‘Look at us,’ I thought. ‘Look at us’ – what we’ve overcome, what we’ve accomplished, how we’ve grown and what we have learned. This horrible experience that all of us had with this one man, was the catalyst for all these spectacular changes in our lives.
I love success stories and spending time with Max made me remember how awful being around a Narc really is. It still baffles me, why I let a miserable, moody, hateful, s-o-b, with no plan and no future, have so much control over my happiness.
He’ll never be happy, while the four of us, have never been happier, never had so much success, never experienced so much joy and peace – all without him. There was a lesson here for all of us and we got it- we got it – in losing him, we found ourselves and that my friends, is what this journey is all about.
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Not sure why I got into reading your articles on narcissists, I’d never really considered myself one, but after reading the descriptions I realize it describes my own needs and behavior down to a t – with the only difference being that in one of my earliest relationships, during the extreme emotional roller-coaster, I realized that my behavior was manipulative and self-deceptive, something I hadn’t been able to see in myself before, and that the girl I was with, I wasn’t making any happier.
So I just… let go.
I started trying to cut down on any falsehood and fakery, resorting to brutal honesty instead, and while that didn’t exactly result in longer or more stable relationships, it definitely changed the quality of them.
I still HAVE to seek out intense, fulfilling relationships, trying to ‘settle’ is an exercise in futility, because not honoring my own needs just results and poor physical, emotional and mental health, and betraying this would simply result in disconnected and unfulfilled relationships.
It’s like – I don’t require to be validated by attention so much anymore, as I require to be accepted and understood, so that I can make use of my own rhythms that charge me up and give me fuel, and with that, I have a full plate from which to share with others, so to speak.
If I don’t fill up my ‘tank’, I lack the energy or motivation to do anything at all, whether that would be work, social interaction, a relationship, etc.
So my paradigm now is that I tell up-front to any woman I interact with that I have no intention of cutting ties to any other woman in my life, that each relationship is meaningful in itself as well as providing resources to fuel and nurture other relationships.
I try to keep down hypocrisy as much as I can, so I don’t ask for exclusivity anymore, because I can’t offer it, though funnily enough, I’m interacting with women who, whether they claim to desire an exclusive relationships or not, they invariably hit a certain point when the relationship between us is most intense (and relationships with me are invariably extremely intense, because that’s where I thrive and the space I seek to maintain, if possible), where they start feeling extremely insecure from the littlest, stupidest thing, and claim I’m superficial, but seem to lack the ability to go all the way in seeking to understand my own needs and perspective, while I do honestly try to do the same in return.
The best example of this would be that, while I openly profess the fact that I keep an open-relationship paradigm, and I keep communication open, this paradigm has allowed me to be less unsatisfied interacting with any one person, with the result that I have pretty much never had sexual relationships with other women while being invested with the one – and yet invariably the women close off the relationships and retreat when they feel threatened.
It’s annoying and feels like the shittiest lack of trust – it would be much more helpful if they put their attitudes where their mouths and vaginas take them – if they’re attracted to me, figure out what makes them attracted and fulfilled, and nurture it and face their fears.
There is NOTHING more draining for me than to painstakingly build up my reserves and get into my ‘zone’, where I can give instead of take, and then be rejected in that way. It takes months, sometimes years, to be able to get back into balance, it usually fucks me up emotionally and physically, and makes it very hard to not slip into a ‘all women are hypocritical sluts pretending to be saints’ mentality and attitude.
I love and am thankful for all the women that have honored my life – they helped me grow and find myself, and helped make me stronger and a better person. But at the same time, it’s so hard to forgive the cowards in them.
Might-be-narc: I wish I had the time to properly reply to your message, but I will say that filling up ‘your tank’ as you call it, at the expense of draining someone else’s shows a lack of morality and integrity. You can call it whatever name makes you feel better, but needing other people to regulate your mood is still requiring external validation.
If you think that any woman is okay with her man keeping a harem on the side, where he can emotionally cheat, then you are kidding yourself. I’m sure if you actually do communicate honestly with them about the actual purpose these women serve to you, they would walk away fast and those that stay either don’t understand, or are unhealthy enough to think they can change you. And what of these women that you keep around? What do you do or say to them to keep them invested in you? Are you honest with them or do you manipulate them?
I’m really confused with how angry your words are about how, when a woman starts to see you seek out other women for your needs and she retreats – how does that make you upset? I would say that’s a very normal and healthy behavior. Why would she leave herself wide open to be hurt by you when you are clearly getting your needs met elsewhere? This behavior tells her you are not to be trusted, nor are you capable of understanding true intimacy between one man and one woman.
Loved this!! I have an x narc and he is very similar to Max. Thank you for sharing!
As a person who is just discovering they have fairly extreme narcissistic qualities (relationship is starting to break down) the worst thing to read here is how long it takes for the other non narc to realise that most of the time, the narc is in full comprehension and doesn’t understand why the partner just doesn’t leave. It gives justification to how they treat you. Otherwise im currently trying to determine whether i can or want to overcome these narc qualities.Relationship is on the rocks, we’re going to start relationship counselling to see if we can make it work, however I feel that i have my own decision to make before we continue or before I hurt her. (emotionally …. not meant in a vindictive manner.)
I can’t believe my eyes. What I just read – the interview is the most accurate and similar situation to who I date and what I have been feeling. I actually laughed out loud in awe of the Facebook flash back. So true that we can see the growth and look back and smile. THANK YOU for sharing this and ALL of your blogs. I am truly hooked and can’t stop reading. It’s getting me over my ex with every word I read. Xo
The sentence you wrote.”His general temperament simmers around misery and anger, except when he has an abundance of supply, then he seems almost manic” resonated with me. I only had one experience with a narc (five months), and I was blown away by the change in him from flat affect in the beginning to euphoric in the end. As he became more euphoric, he began to tire of me and the devaluing stage began. I hadn’t heard anyone before refer to this euphoric/manic attitude. I thought perhaps the narc I dated was a touch bi-polar. Thank the stars, I was able to leave him before he hit the discard stage. It’s been 8 months and I’m still in therapy, but I know I’ll get totally beyond this and be a wiser woman for it. No contact saved me after I ended our relationship.
This is where I came in with my narc. She was in distress, isolated and depressed. Working in a small city with very little social life, and cut off from a rich supply.
Her depression and sadness triggered all my rescue impulses and I busted my butt to help her. Propped her up, gave her affirmations every day, helped in every way on her job, strategized about how to move to a bigger city so she could have more friends. Helped her professionally in a million ways. I even sang quietly to help her get to sleep at night. The full package of lovingkindness.
It all worked and payed off for her. Success, a new job in a shiny new city, bigger and more exciting. Once back on her feet, getting high on a rich new supply, my devaluation began. I took it “only” for a few months but the scars are just now becoming apparent. I was just recalling a suppressed memory today — after a blissful (for me) night and morning of intimacy we were out on the street and I saw her making extended eye contact with a stranger. It shocked me so much I buried the memory; I was so in love (with a projected image, but i did not low that), making eye contact with other women was the furthest thing from my mind. Recalling her behavior now is so painful. In that moment I had to choose between what my eyes were telling me and what my hopeful, trusting heart was telling me. I dissociated from what I was seeing and let me heart choose. Big mistake.
I can hear in the interview Max is the same way. Someone will rescue him and he will fatten up on supply and move on. That someone will know a lot of pain I would bet.
My lesson in this is not to shove those anomalies aside. To ATTEND to things that seem off, seem wrong. Don’t let them get filed immediately in the old denial file. And I need to learn not to get caught up in another’s pain so much that I stop taking taking care of myself. NPD is her disease, but I have one too. It’s called codependency, and it will hurt me if I don’t treat it. (Two Al-Anon meetings this week; that’s a start.)
On the bright side, I can and will heal from this. My ex NPD gf never will. She is doomed to run on that treadmill, forever lost inside the false self she made as a damaged child. Very sad. But not my problem.
I’ve seen this ‘depressed’ side of a narc – when I travelled overseas with him and he was isolated from his supply. He b/c nasty and disconnected. I thought he missed his daughter but no he cared none about that… It was his minions, his posse of starry eyed juniors who put him on a gym instructors pedastal that he longed for.
I tried to bring back my ‘euphoric’ BF the man I loved but that man was gone… He was a fascade!
A year later I’m stronger, happier & more successful than I could ever have been with him (though he always said we’d accomplish this or that together). I don’t hear much about him but have heard bits and pieces that he’s still treating his new supply like crap, toying with others through social media and miserable.
Life for him can’t be great… Not when your heart is nasty and you’re unable to love, truly love others in friendship and more.
Thanks for the article! It definitely is a personality I know… I hope I never date another like him again. I’m still too frightened to date… I’m happily flying solo.
Great post! I look forward to the next installment where he bounces back to his happy narc self. Please, at some point, see if he will do another. I would really like to see this either go full circle or see him become more self aware (if that’s possible).
This post was actually entertaining! After last week’s straight, hard hit into my heart this one actually made me feel entertained. I could picture this Max person and the name is just perfect, too. Max!
Thank you again! Oh, and thank you for recommending “The Untethered Soul” book. I’ve just started digesting it and I am only at chapter 3 but wow! Does it really make sense! Thank you, thank you, thank you Savannah!
Wow…once again you’ve nailed it, Savannah! I literally stopped, put my head in my hands & sighed when I read this part: “I look for successful, educated girls. I prefer brunettes usually. I like a nice slender body…Even educated, healthy women have chinks in their armor. We find the weak point. We look for easier marks where we don’t have to put in as much effort – people that are too nice, too naïve and who don’t put their foot down, people we can manipulate easier, someone who will allow us to keep some sort of game going.” This pretty much describes me to a T. And reading about the techniques Max uses to manipulate women like me was awake up call to be honest with myself about some of the behaviors I’m seeing from a new guy I’ve been out with a few times. Despite going through therapy & reading anything and everything I can about narcissists & codependents I still can feel myself falling into that same pattern. No more!!! Thanks for the wake up call. You are truly a life saver 🙂
This describes me as well however I am blonde. I noticed with time he made remarks such as ‘I will never be with a blonde again’ then at his worse ‘your (see lack of proper grammer) a blonde heap of trash’ He really despised this aspect of me! I knew his ex had dark hair, and his new supply has brown hair. He also made many digs at the fact that I had a degree but wasn’t working in that field. Sigh. They find giving, talented and educated women (and apparently brown haired girls are more respectable to go after?) then just rip them to shreds.
Just have to share this. After I read and responded above I picked up my cell phone and discovered a couple lenghty texts he had written at 5 AM, and I will quote part of it: “…I was moaning over some feelings I am struggling with and they are overwhelming me….. Does anything ever strike an emotional chord with you…. A lot of things seem like an emotionless chore. . .Could anything ever trigger you to show some emotions…[daughter]came home and you vanish like I am valuless. I send [my thoughts]and pray or encourage you to SAY something emotional.” Sound familiar? I guess the good part of it is that it says that I’ve been successful in the role of “Ice Queen.” 🙂
The next step Kathy is to not read them at all – just delete.
Yup. This guy sounds likes a classic case of a self hating narcissist. I hope he gets help. Women will fundamentally be vulnerable to these types of men due to their nature. As a guy I have long avoided women who have not learned to deny that vulnerable part of their nature to narcissists. Women like that have a fundamental lack of self control and it always leads to trouble. Kudos to the blog owner for this empowering information!
The similarity is that everything is someone else’s fault. If I would only do one more thing for him, life would be better. And I spent 25 years trying.
And each time he wanted one more little thing and then his life would be good. Could I just give him that? Of course. Wow. Even now he’ll praise me for one little morsel–and he’ll then just want one more little morsel. But it was infinity; it was never enough. It was always one more little thing that I, me, myself, had to do and then he would be happy.
Dear Savannah,
I’ve been reading your blog for a few weeks and it has helped me immeasurably since I broke things off with my Narc in August 2014. Five years of on again off again insanity, not understanding the moods, the cheating, the lies, the highs, the lows, and finally after reading through your articles, it all makes sense. Your blog this morning validated what I was feeling yesterday and I had to comment. I am finally finding myself again, after being beaten down by this man and his disorder for so long. I am nurturing relationships with new friends, spending time with my family, making the right choices for me, feeding my heart and soul with positive, loving energy. It feels good. I still have to push back the thoughts of him, the feelings of failure, my hurt pride, I work every day at putting my self esteem back in place and repeat again and again, I am worth so much more that that! There is life after a Narc relationship. No contact is a must. Thank you, thank you, for the guidance and support you’ve given me in this journey, that you give to all of us out here who are victims of these predators. It feels good to be me, again.
Dori
Thank you Dori, for your comments. It was meaningful to me to day: “There is life after a Narc relationship. No contact is a must.” I need to take those steps even further to take care of myself socially now, in looking for other freindships, relationships, that “I am worth so much more than that!”
Thank you Savannah , I look forward to your weekly letters